4/22/2009 @ 6:00PM

In Pictures: Baseball's Best Relief Pitchers For The Buck

To determine baseball’s best relievers for the buck, we looked at the 58 pitchers who accumulated at least 20 combined holds (when a pitcher inherits a lead in a close game that that he does not relinquish before being removed) and saves (when he maintains that lead through the completion of the game) last season. Pitchers were ranked based on those two statistics as well as ERA+, a stat that indexes a pitcher’s earned run average against the league average, while accounting for the differences in ball parks that make some more “pitcher-friendly” than others. Only statistics from the regular season were included in our calculations.

We then compared the pitchers’ pay from last season to the median salary of a pool of relievers with similar longevity in the league, since veteran players with enough tenure to qualify for salary arbitration or free agency command larger paychecks than younger players, who typically make close to the league minimum. A “bullpen bargain” score of 120 means the pitcher provided 20% more value–based on his performance vs. his paycheck–than the average of the 58 relievers we examined.